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Brick No141: Mel, Nick, Lucy, Emma, and Chris
By Matt Weston, Thursday 21 April 2005 Five Star Today's Brick pretty much writes itself - yes, it's 5 more reader websites for you to critique. And that means that, in a New York minute, I can give up centre stage to Mel, Nick, Lucy, Emma, and Chris. They need your help. Your feedback! And the less of my space and your time I take up "introducing", the better. But I do have a few brief words to say. Firstly, my thanks to all of you who asked me to consider your broken, impending or new sites for the list below. That it took me 12 days longer to finalise this list than it took 115 cardinals to pontificate over the next pontiff shows how hard a job it was. With a flurry of late entries, I had to perm 5 sites from 72. Secondly, why give feedback? (1) You get the same warm glow you get when you help an old lady across the street. You don't do that? Oh, ok. (2) The best way to learn is to get feedback. The second best way is to give feedback. See Brick No51, "How To Give And Get Great Feedback". If you were one of the unlucky 67 that missed out on a web critique this time round, you'll learn nearly as much if you spend 15 minutes (total) critiquing the 5 sites below. (3) As an experiment, I've changed the way we do the critiques. Now you get to post your comments on the five temporary "QuickTopic" discussion boards I've set up. So it's not just Mel, Nick et al who get to read your comments, it's the whole of the Business Bricks community. (4) The five best posters (as judged by Mel, Nick, Lucy, Emma, and Chris) will get plugs in next week's Brick. A word in your ear: If you want your suggestions to be listened to (and acted on), start by flagging the single, best thing about the existing site. If you criticise from the word go, your listener won't listen. And a double yellow line: If you want to include a link to your website and a phone number at the bottom of your post, that's aok. But don't treat this as a chance to plug your service without giving useful advice. It's not big. And it doesn't work. Enough me. Time for today's star turns: (1) www.littlebluedog.co.uk Leamington-based Mel and Emma went live with the Little Blue Dog website just two days ago. It's baby wear for tots under two. "The Home Of Infantly Recognisable Babywear," no less. Mel was a shoo-in: she offered to donate her first-ever website sale to BB. Post your comments (2) www.handierman.co.uk Nick Mitev's website is new, just like his business. Version 1 only bought in one call in three weeks. Then he changed a few things round, and in the last 7 days v2 has generated three clients. His Google AdWords bring him 25 to 40 visitors a day. NM self-built the site (see Brick No87), so is open to all ideas to boost his conversion of clicks to customers. Post your comments (3) www.junkk.com Brickie Emma Lunn is "head of stuff" at Junkk.com (a site that aims to reduce waste and promote "second use"). What you see is a soft-launch. The site goes live in the Online Marketing Show in June. Can you help Emma iron it out? Post your comments (4) www.dot-art.co.uk Lucy Byrne is a Brickie, and part of the Liverpool Business Bricks meet-up. dot-art is an art agency and online gallery. Lucy has been going since September, but despite growing word-of-mouth and exhibition sales hasn't made a sale directly through the site yet. She gets circa 800 unique visitors to the site a month (10-40 a day). Post your comments (5) www.wantitbak.com Chris Cameron also has problems with conversion. Want It Bak ("the UK's first and foremost lost and found system") attracts 400+ visitors a week, but with less than 1% conversion of browsers to buyers. He wants to know if it's the site or the business model that's the problem. Post your comments Remember to sign up: back to top |
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